Friday, December 22, 2017

There is an edible world around us
that was expertly known and used for millennia before the arrival of the first
Europeans to North America. Even the early settlers had an acute knowledge of plants
and their culinary and medicinal uses. Today, much of the knowledge once
considered essential for life has been traded for easily accessible and neatly
packaged foods and medicines. It can be easy to forget that much of what we
take for granted, both in cuisine and medicine is deeply rooted in the past.

Indigenous knowledge of the natural
world has been passed from generation to generation through a rich oral
tradition. The study of plants and their uses through cultural knowledge is
called ethnobotany. Beyond the staples corn, beans, and squash, famously
referred to as the three sisters, a multitude of other plants were utilized by
the prehistoric people who thrived in North America. In many parts of the
world, similar traditional knowledge persists to this day out of necessity or
tradition.

Plant remains are relatively rare
in Pennsylvania’s archaeological record due to the poor preservation of organic
material, but plant use is well documented in ethnographic accounts of historic
tribes and knowledge held by modern indigenous communities. Some indigenous
groups have been reluctant to share traditional medicinal knowledge with
outsiders out of concern that it will be used by pharmaceutical companies
wishing only to profit from the information without respect or acknowledgement
to the indigenous communities and their intellectual rights.

In North America, many species
which we today consider to be weeds or nuisance plants had culinary or other
importance to indigenous people. The plants most often used by Native Americans
were also the most common and in many cases, are still common today. Plants
were collected with respect and attention to conservation to ensure its
survival. The time of year in which the plant was collected could determine its
intended use. Some plants collected for culinary use as sprouts may be
collected for their flowers or roots once mature, other plants become
poisonous. It is important to know and understand the plants which are being
collected.

A
depiction of Native Americans harvesting bark and fruit from trees near a
settlement.

(Illustration:
Jonathan Frazier)

The study of medicinal plants and
substances through cultural knowledge is called ethnopharmacology. It is not secret that many over the counter
and prescription drugs find their roots in nature. Aspirin’s pain relieving
ingredient has its history in willow bark, which could be steeped in water and
drunk as a tea. Beano, another common drug and anti-flatulent, gets its
effectiveness from an enzyme found in the fungus responsible for black mold.
Surprisingly, around 50% of cancer treatment drugs approved in the last 30
years are derived either directly or indirectly from nature. The most common
ailments treated by medicinal plants were those of the gastro-intestinal
system. Today, many natural teas can be found in your local grocery store
intended to treat the same issues and using some of the same plants, such as
mint and ginger.

Although many native plants have
fallen out of favor for culinary use, others have been elevated to such high
status as to collect a hefty price tag at modern markets. In many parts of
North America, spring brings an abundance of desirable wild foods including
morel and chanterelle mushrooms, ramps (a wild leek with a mild garlicy onion
flavor), and fiddleheads (fern sprouts).

Pennsylvania is fortunate to host
an abundance of wild plants. Modern foragers, much like those of the past, look
forward to Spring when nature’s bounty abounds. With the shortest day of the
year now behind us, we can look forward to Spring and all it brings.

You can explore more Native
American foodways at the State Museum of Pennsylvania’s booth at this year’s
Pennsylvania Farm Show, taking place Jan 6-13, 2018 in Harrisburg, PA. The
State Museum will host an exhibit space featuring information on native
American foodways and the history of the development of agriculture in
Pennsylvania. Prehistoric artifacts on display illustrate the transition for
native groups from primarily hunters and gatherers to farmers. The changes in stone tools including spear
points and atlatl weights during the Transitional Period (2900 BP- 4850 BP) to stone
hoes and pestles in the Woodland Period (1550 AD- 2900 BP) reflect this culture
change. A corn grinding station utilizing stone tools allows visitors to
experience the process used by native peoples. Our booth will be located
opposite the carousel in the Main Exhibition Hall of the Farm Show Complex. Mark your calendar and plan your visit to the
102nd Pennsylvania Farm Show (http://www.farmshow.pa.gov/Pages/default.aspx)

Friday, December 8, 2017

Here we are, the Workshops in
Archaeology and Thanksgiving are over and the Pennsylvania State Farm Show and
Christmas season have begun. As we prepare our exhibit for the Farm Show in
January 2018, the lab archaeologists and ever valued volunteers, have been hard
at work processing the artifacts found at Fort Hunter this past field season. Today
we are going to take a brief look at what happens to the artifacts once they
come into the lab from the field and where we are in that process with this
year’s artifacts.

As mentioned previously in this
blog, a general rule of thumb for the time it will take to fully process
artifacts in the lab is approximately seven days of lab work for each day of
field work, depending on the quantity and types of artifacts found. With the
help of our volunteers this time is cut down a bit, but it is still a lot of
work and a long process.

The initial steps for processing
any collection in the lab is to organize and record the provenience information
from field bags through the preparation of a digital field bag inventory. The
field bags are then organized by unit and level allowing for easy processing
later on.

View of the field bag
inventory

Field bags organized by
unit and level in bins ready to be laid out for washing.

Once this is completed, the
artifacts are laid out by bag on trays and the process of cleaning the
artifacts through washing, dry brushing, or other conservation techniques
begins. As can be seen above, we have already emptied a few bins of field bags
and the image below shows some of the artifacts out and ready to be washed.

Artifacts laid out on
trays to be washed

Artifacts being
cleaned, washing on the left, dry brushing on the right

As the artifacts are cleaned and
air dried, the next step in the process begins, labeling. Artifacts are labeled
with the site number, in the case of Fort Hunter the site number is 36Da159,
and the catalog number, which identifies the location where the artifact was
found. Catalog numbers are determined based on the provenience information
recorded from the field bags.

Clean artifacts
(fire-cracked rock) being labeled

Once the artifacts are properly
labeled, they are identified and bagged by type within each catalog number and
then inventoried in a digital format, to make for easy lookup for research or
exhibit creation.

Currently in the archaeology lab,
we have completed the initial organization and recordation of proveniences as
well as the identification of catalog numbers for each provenience. Washing,
labeling and identifying/bagging are currently occurring in the lab every day.

This year we are taking our processing
one step further by attempting to mend, or put back together, prehistoric
pottery fragments to see if we can identify one or more vessels. This has
proven difficult as there are many very tiny pieces of pottery and many of the
larger pieces do not fit back together, but some progress has been made as can
be seen in the pictures below.

Staff archaeologist
attempting to mend pottery fragments

As we process the artifacts, it
becomes more clear what types of artifacts are present in the collection and
this year we seem to have an abundance of prehistoric artifacts such as stone
waste flakes and tools, pottery and bone. This said, there are also numerous
historic artifacts. Though very few of them date to the fort period they still
help tell the story of the landscape. These artifacts include buttons, musket
balls, butchered bone, nails of varying types and other architectural materials,
historic ceramics and glass; as well as more modern artifacts such as plastic
and Styrofoam.

Here is a glimpse at some of the more notable artifacts
we have uncovered from this year thus far:

Prehistoric artifacts:

Shell bead, possibly
with incised markings on the top and bottom surfaces

Vessel body sherd from
an exterior and interior cord marked vessel, also mended together

.

Incised rim sherd fragment of a Shenks Ferry Tradition vessel.

Projectile points: top row: Madison type triangle point dates to the late
Late Woodland Period (AD. 1450 - 1600.), second row down Rossville-like point type, dates to the Middle
Woodland Period (1,000 BP. – 2,100 BP.) third row down: Lehigh/ Koens-Crispin
point type, dates to the early Transitional Period (4,350 BP. – 4,850 BP.),
bottom row right: the large broadspear/ knife, dates to the Transitional/Late Archaic
Period (4,350 BP. – 6,850 BP.) bottom left: this point which could fall within Late
Archaic through the Middle Woodland periods.

(Custer 2001, PHMC 2015, Ritchie 1971)

Historic period
artifacts:

Tin glazed earthenware
(left) and scratch blue salt glazed stoneware (right). Both fall within the
French and Indian War time period, though all were found in mixed contexts.

Musket Balls of varying
sizes and date ranges.

Gun Flint

Brass and pewter buttons
dating around the late 18th and 19th centuries.

As usual, the fort at Fort Hunter
remains elusive, but each year we find little hints of its existence through
artifacts. We continue to learn more and more about the landscape and how human
occupation has impacted the land through the thousands of years of use that we
have been able to identify through our excavations. We hope you have enjoyed
this update on what is happening to the artifacts found at Fort Hunter during
the 2017 field season and we wish you all a wonderful and safe holiday season!

1965 The
Archaeology of New York State.
The Natural History Press, Garden City, New York

1971 A
Typology and Nomenclature for New York Projectile Points. University of the
State of New York, State Education Dept. Albany, New York. Originally published
1961, Bulletin No. 384, New York State Museum and Science Service.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

The American holiday that would become known as
Thanksgiving had its origins in Europe. Many towns and villages held
celebrations to mark a plentiful harvest and blessings of the previous year.
When the first Europeans came to America in the late 16th and early
17th centuries, they brought these harvest celebration traditions
with them. Harvest celebrations and days of thanksgiving were held sporadically
in the early colonies as no formal holiday existed. The First National
Proclamation of Thanksgiving was issued by the Continental Congress from its
temporary capitol in York, Pennsylvania in 1777. Thanksgiving has been
celebrated as a national holiday since 1863 when it was designated by President
Abraham Lincoln.

Over the years since the first celebrations were held,
many types of table wares have held the Thanksgiving holiday meal. From deer
and squash on wooden bowls and pewter dishes, to turkey and mashed potatoes on
disposable plastic plates; the feast is served on the popular dishes of the
day.

From the time of the first national Thanksgiving
proclamation, the holiday meal would have been served on the fashionable table
wares of the day including creamware and pearlware. Creamware and pearlware
were fine earthenware ceramics manufactured in England from the mid-18th
century through the 1840s. Creamware is a cream-colored porous ceramic that
appears yellow or green where it pools in crevices. Pearlware appears white or
slightly blue-tinted to the eye and pools blue in crevices.

These ceramic types were produced in a large variety
of vessel forms, sizes, decorative styles, and colors, and remain as highly
popular today as they did in the decades around the turn of the 19th
century. Creamware and pearlware are found on most archaeological sites of that
time period and the State Museum of Pennsylvania collections hold many exceptional
examples of these ceramic types.

A large variety of shell-edged pearlware vessels were
recovered from Philadelphia Market Street Site 36Ph001 in the 1970s, including
different sizes and shapes of food serving dishes and serving platters. Many of
these pieces are decorated with a blue shell-edged rim pattern.

Blue
Shell Edge Pearlware Serving Dishes and Platter

In the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, holiday meals may have consisted of many courses of meats, wild game,
and seafood with accompanying vegetable and side dishes. Sauces, creams, and
gravies would have been provided to pour on top. Several blue shell-edged
pearlware gravy or cream boats are part of this collection.

Blue
Shell Edge Pearlware Gravy or Cream Boats

A table setting of the time would have consisted of
numerous wine, liquor, and drinking glasses; individual place settings of up to
24 pieces; and different size plates and bowls for each course of food. These
pearlware plates and bowls with green shell-edged rims were also recovered from
site 36Ph001.

Green
Shell Edge Pearlware Plates and Bowl

Large creamware serving platters may have held meats
such as turkey, chicken, fish, or pork. Creamware was available in several popular
patterns. The serving platters pictured here have Feather edge and Royal edge rim
patterns.

Creamware table settings were available in the Feather
edge and Royal edge patterns, as well as in the Queens pattern, octagonal shaped
rims, and several other patterns. Queen’s pattern or Queensware was named for
its popularity with British Queen Charlotte.

Creamware Bowl and Plate in Queen’s Pattern (top left
and right) and Octagonal Plate (bottom)

Pearlware table wares with transfer-printed
decorations became popular around the turn of the 19th century.
Transfer printing involved transferring an inked design from a copper plate onto
a ceramic vessel. Early transfer print pieces were available in blue, with
later colors developing in black, brown, red, purple, and green. These pieces
often exhibit oriental scenes, pastoral landscapes, or biblical and romantic
motifs and were very popular at the time. The Head House and Commuter Tunnel
sites in Philadelphia produced many beautiful ceramics including a number of
transfer-printed pearlware vessels shown here.

Transfer-printed
Pearlware Dishes in Blue and Black. Bottom Plate Motif is a Landscape Scene
from Conway, New Hampshire

Creamware and pearlware vessels were also produced using
many other decorative techniques including handpainting, dipping (annular,
mocha, banded), sponging, luster glazing, enameling, embossing, and encrusting
(gritted). The great popularity of creamware and pearlware ceramics finally
began to die out in the mid-1800s, making way for whiteware and ironstone.

Thank you to our followers, volunteers and colleagues
who help us in our efforts to preserve the past for the future. We have much to be thankful for and hope
you’ll continue to follow our blog and visit with us in the future.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

As many of you may know, we recently held or annual
Workshops in Archaeology on October 28, 2017.
This year’s theme was Ethnicity in
the Archaeological Record; and although attendance was a little lighter
than usual, the papers presented and the discussions provoked were as
interesting as ever.

The day began with the Director of The State Museum of
Pennsylvania, Beth Hager, welcoming everyone to the museum and generally
setting the stage for this year’s installment of our workshops program. Dr. Kurt Carr briefly introduced the topic of
the day and was followed by our first presenter, Keith Heinrich of
Pennsylvania’s State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO).

Keith suggested that in some cases (not all) place names can
be an indicator of ethnicity. He
discussed two examples, Germantown in Philadelphia and Polish Hill in
Pittsburgh. Being an architectural
historian, he was also able to describe structural clues to ethnicity.

The second presentation of the morning was scheduled to be
Brice Obermeyer of the Delaware Nation who unfortunately was unable to join
us. Nothing daunted, our own Janet
Johnson was able to collaborate with Mr. Obermeyer and deliver an interesting paper
identifying a Delaware village in Missouri.
Janet drew comparisons between Delaware sites in Pennsylvania using clues
such as personal ornaments (silver adornments, glass beads, brass points &
cones…) as well as structural similarities in log cabin construction.

Session three was delivered by Ken Basalik from Cultural
Heritage Research Services, Inc. (CHRS).
Ken delivered a cautionary summation of several historic sites in
Pennsylvania acknowledging the difficulty of defining an ethnic group through
both time and space. In some examples,
physical alterations of structures through time were enough to disguise what
could have been ethnic attributes. In other
instances, the artifacts recovered alluded to one group or another with varying
degrees of accuracy. Concluding with the
idea that in some cases, structures and artifacts may offer clues but the best
way of deciphering ethnicity was historical documentation and the personal
accounts of those that lived there, if available.

The fourth session of the morning was presented by Hannah
Harvey, Pennsylvania’s State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). Her research was devoted exclusively to the
company housing associated with the early 20th century Columbia
Plate Glass Company near Blairsville in Indiana county. Using documentation, predominantly census
records, she was successful in “mapping the social geography of the
community”.

Although she too found it
difficult to corroborate ethnicity via excavation.

John P. McCarthy, Cultural Preservation Specialist with the
Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation, delivered the fifth paper, a
discussion of burial practices at two early 19th century African
American cemeteries in Philadelphia. In
several of the burials common yet unusual grave goods were interred with the
deceased; coins, a shoe and a plate. He
contends that these are vestiges of spiritual non-Christian beliefs about the
afterlife that developed in Africa and were demonstrative of an “African based
social identity” in the face of growing hostility in 19th century Philadelphia.

The next paper also dealt with African Americans in
Philadelphia, this time in the late 18th century. Jed Levin, Chief of the History Branch of the
Independence National Historical Park, spoke of the excavations at the National
Constitution Center and the President’s House over the past 15 years and detailed
the contrasting stories of two African Americans in Revolutionary War era
Philadelphia. One, James Oronoco Dexter
a free coachmen and Ona Judge, Martha Washington’s enslaved seamstress. Using both historical documentation and the
archaeology he was able to construct a forgotten piece of our collective
national history.

Our former Senior Archaeology Curator Steve Warfel spoke about
the German religious community at Ephrata Cloister during the mid-18th
century. Steve’s presentation discussed the
groups strict, pious, religious beliefs and how they changed as a result of
internal and external pressures. Some of
these changes are reflected in the historic documentation others are not, but
are evident in the archaeological record.
For example, their rules and beliefs are written about in several
sources so they are known from the written record. One such rule of behavior was a belief in
poverty, they thought personal property to be sinful, and yet redware dishes
were recovered archaeologically that clearly had initials scratched into the
base, marking it as belonging to someone.

Demonstrating the transformation of their self-view, self-identification
being at the core of the definition of ethnicity.

The final presentation of the day was delivered by two
speakers, Cristie Barry and Amanda Rasmussen both from McCormick Taylor. They also discussed Germans, focusing on two
German farmsteads in eastern Pennsylvania tracing their development through the
18th and 19th centuries.
Looking at the farm layout and the household artifacts as evidence of
the frugal, self-sufficient nature of the German occupants. They too found that without the historical
documentation it would have been difficult to establish an ethnic link based
just on the archaeological record.

At the conclusion of the presentations Jonathan Burns,
Director of Juniata College’s Cultural Resource Institute, provided a closing
summary to the day’s discussions. Many
of the paper’s resolved that without the accompanying historic documentation it
can be difficult to establish ethnicity in the archaeological record. The exception to this is finding a unique
artifact or artifacts that are obvious ethnic calling cards. While conducting excavations at Fort Shirley
in Huntingdon county a medallion / charm was recovered inscribed in Arabic “No
God but Allah”.

A clear marker of Muslim
ethnicity, but an extremely rare find.

Along with the presentations Steve Nissly was in attendance
demonstrating his Flintnapping skills.

Artifact
were being identified by Doug McLearen and Kira Heinrich, both from the Pennsylvania
State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO).

Noël Strattan and Hannah Harvey, also from the Pennsylvania State
Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), explained the Cultural Resource Geographic
Information System (CRGIS) and registered new sites. In all it was another successful Workshops in
Archaeology concluding of course with a reception in the Hall of Anthropology
where participants and attendants could snack and chat less formally about the
day.

Hopefully this glimpse of the Annual Workshops in
Archaeology has been enough to entice you to join us in the future. Next year’s date is yet to be announced but
we will post it here as soon as it is scheduled so stay tuned!

Friday, October 27, 2017

Anthropomorphic renditions in
various media are well represented in the archaeological assemblages of the
world, from Paleolithic times to the present. There is something about the appearance
of the sculpted, modeled or carved human face on the collar of a pot, the bowl
of a tobacco pipe or, perhaps, a pocket talisman, that conveys the phrase ---
speak to me!

Figure 1. Pine
Island “rock face”, Late Archaic period

Human face-like images have been
recovered from archaeological contexts in Pennsylvania going back in time to
the Late Archaic period. The “face rock” from Piney Island (Figure 1) may be
4000 years old as it was found between soil strata with radiocarbon dates of 3720
BP. and 4000 BP. (Kent 1996). In the Upper Delaware Valley, similar faces were apparently
pecked onto the surfaces of small cobbles during the Late Woodland period. Stylized
faces were also carved onto small pebbles and, the interior beam posts of the
Oklahoma Delaware Big House or Xingwikaon.
These carvings in bold relief may be Lenape renditions of the Mesingw or Masked Being. The Ohtas, or “Doll Beings” with remarkable
powers (Figure 2), used in the Doll Dance by the Oklahoma Delaware were also carved from wood in precise detail (Kraft
2001).

Figure 2. Wooden
Ohta doll, Delaware 19th century

The Munsee, who occupied a large
part of the Delaware Valley from Port Jervis south to the Water Gap, decorated
their cooking and storage pots with human-face-like features. Typically, three
punch marks, made with a blunt stylus carved from wood or bone, formed the eyes
and mouth and these were located at each rim castellation (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Munsee
face pot, probably 17th century

Occasionally the potter chose to sculpt one face above the other. In the Lower
Susquehanna Valley, these human face-like renditions became very common appliques
to the collars of Susquehannock pottery by the first quarter of the 17th
century (Figure 4). Susquehannock face pots were used for the storage and
cooking of foods and as receptacles for burial offerings that held one last
meal for the deceased.

Figure 4. Susquehannock
face pot. Early 17th century

In both the Delaware and Susquehanna
valleys, charm stones were made and carried by the Lenape and Susquehannock
people. Principally made of soft stone such as steatite, serpentine, siltstone
and by the middle of the 18th century, red pipestone (Figure 5),
these effigies like the wooden Ohtas,
were carved with great detail.

Figure 5. Pipestone
maskette. Conestoga Indian site. Mid-18th century

Human face-like images adorned the
bowls of tobacco pipes of the different Native American cultures. Certain clay pipes
of the Wyoming Valley Complex (Smith 1973) are characterized by pronounced eye
and mouth features indicative of some northern Iroquoian false face masks (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Wyoming
Valley clay face pipe. Early 15 century

Some of these mimic Onondaga and Mohawk pipe styles attributed to
the Early Iroquois Chance phase dates to
approximately 1375-1425 A.D. Our Pennsylvania examples appear to be confined to
the North Branch of the Susquehanna River from Nanticoke to the New York State
line. Several pipe styles from southern Ontario suggest contact between the
Wendat and Susquehannocks in the early to mid-17th century. Examples
of the pinched face or plague pipe, a late 16th to early 17th
century form, are rare in Susquehannock material culture but common in southern
Ontario (Figure 7).

Moving our discussion westward we
note the vasiform-shaped pipe of fine grained siltstone from a Seneca site in
the Upper Allegheny valley. With a pronounced blowing or whistling mouth, boldly
shaped brows and deep-set eyes, the image mimics the “Blower” category of false
face masks used by the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee
in their Mid-Winter ceremony (Figure 8). Another, stone face though much less
expressionless, is from a site on the Sinnemahoning drainage in west-central
Pennsylvania. Carved from fireclay, a soft indurated clay stone, the image has
neither eyes nor mouth giving the object an expressionless appearance suggesting
that it is an unfinished piece that was lost or discarded by its owner (Figure
9).

Figure 9. Stone
maskette. Sinnemahoning Valley. Age unknown

Anthropomorphic images whether
modeled or carved, onto pots, pipes or rocks take Native American material expression
to its highest level that only the artisans who made these objects might truly understand
their meanings --- speak to me!

Bibliography:

Harrington, Mark R.

1921 Religion and Ceremonies of the
Lenape.Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation Indian Notes and Monographs 19.

One Tank Trip

WFMZ-TV 69 from Reading, Pennsylvania visited The State Museum of Pennsylvania on February 8th, 2017. Karin Mallett prepared a feature piece on great places to visit that are one tank of gas from Reading and our gallery was the focus of this visit. Karin interviewed Kurt Carr, Senior Curator and Janet Johnson in the gallery and provide a nice overview of the spectacular exhibits. Please click on the link below and enjoy this glimpse of the museum during this One Tank Trip!
One Tank Trip: Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology

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